Legal AF - 5/20/2026

22:41The fact that they had all the constitutional protections afforded them as a criminal defendant and were still convicted and yet pardoned without a peep from these weak Republican congresspeople who had the luxury of

22:57Dina Doll:not getting hurt that day because men and women put their bodies on the line for them. It's just, it's a shame on this country that we have, I don't think, even barely reconciled with. It is really disturbing. And I think you're right, you alluded to in the beginning, that perhaps this slush fund to pay insurrectionists will be a step too far for these Republican Congress people. But it is just, the fact that this is even on the table, it shows really how the kind of authoritarian figure Trump wants to be.

23:34Popok:Well, I mean, there's that old saying after you hear a description of something, sounds like a cult. And it sounds like a cult when the Democrats who are making great political hay out of this, as they should, to pin this tail directly on this donkey, they say, well, let's see if we can reach common ground. Can we pass an amendment that convicted child sex abusers can't make application for the fund, voted down by the Republicans? Can we pass an amendment that people convicted of or indicted for violently attacking law enforcement can't make application, voted down? And every one of these is going to be a new ad against these Republicans.

24:20Popok:That's why they hate this. They hated the ballroom and they killed that billion dollar hot potato that Donald Trump threw at them. Here you go. I need a billion now for the free ballroom. They were like, you know, during a national discussion about an administration that where affordability has fallen on deaf ears looking callous. we're not going to give a billion dollars for a golden ballroom. I think that factors in here because if there's no political will, one thing you can say that unifies all MAGA in the House and the Senate is that they're cowards and they're worried about their political hides.

24:59Popok:And if they can't get this passed and don't want to pass it, as we reported it coming on the air, why does Trump think that they're not going to block his weaponization fund? And they didn't even remember when we reported on three months ago when they were going to have a little thing and the big, beautiful bill to give 50 million dollars or some amount of money to pay back the Lindsey Graham's of the world and Congress people who incurred legal expenses related to the Jan 6 investigation because they were cooperating with the insurrectionists. that got killed so now so so so trump's takeaway from that was well 50 million didn't work i'll go for a 1.776 billion i don't get it no we shouldn't get it because like i said at the start this is

25:47Dina Doll:beyond any legal political and that's why it's scary we have the department of justice who is meant to keep us safe, wanting to go pay criminals who who beat and killed officers and doing this right before another election. We should be disturbed. We should be scared. And it's not just Trump. It's Todd Blanch. He the fact that he as I mean, like to your point to Congress, He wouldn't even rule out paying out of this fund somebody who was convicted of violence that day. This is where we're at. And it is stunning. There are a few stories that we have discussed that are as stunning as this one to me, because there is like you can't even try to spin your way out of it.

26:39Dina Doll:And the fact that it is politically even a step too far for a lot of Republicans and Trump still doing that. is alarming.

26:50Popok:I think we have a new tagline for midweek edition of Legal AF. It can go on mugs and t-shirts. Midweek Legal AF, you'll be stunned. Right?

27:02Dina Doll:I know. I always think I'm not going to be surprised. And then there's like a further level of depravity. This to me is a five alarm fire because Trump tends to know where his party, I think, is willing to go and not go. And this This is so extreme, paying the Proud Boys, essentially. You know, this sounds to me like a private army he's trying to coalesce here. Right.

27:28Popok:And I think even the Republicans like Dude realize that if they don't draw the line in the sand here, this could lead to a limitless president where he has unlimited constitutional power to do anything. You know, put money in his pocket, waive his own debts, waive his own tax. Like this, this may be, you know, you're always wondering what is the last straw, even for MAGA, and we may have reached it here. And for the Department of Justice, I mean, there should be calls for Todd Blanche to resign. if Merrick Garland gave that performance and did these things you know there'd be calls for him by the Republicans to immediately resign but instead no we just have you know the communications director for Donald Trump you know relishing in the fact that Trump made his entire party run hard to the right yesterday and he's like F around and find out that's what I'm gonna say on my official White House account I'm like I don't know how that helps you in the general election to make everybody a mini-Trumper.

28:32And we're going to see.

28:34Popok:I think there is a golden, there is a silver lining to what happened yesterday. The harder right these candidates for the Republicans have to run to appease Donald Trump, the more they're out of lockstep with the American people and candidates who all they have to do is just step ever so slightly to the left and to the center to gain the votes. We haven't heard the last of Massey in Kentucky. First of all, Trump just created a couple of new Tom Tillises who are going to be able to completely run around unfettered from now until they're out of office, opposing the Trump administration without any repercussions.

29:13Popok:And Massey may run as an independent, splitting the vote and maybe grabbing the seat in Kentucky, especially if this is a wave election. So we're going to cover all that so much more. When we come back, I want to talk about Judge Bates' new ruling about presidential records. We'll talk about the ballroom and anything else that pops into our minds. You're here on Legal AF, the podcast, the Webby Award-winning Legal AF podcast. We swept the Webbys. You may be wondering, where are the Webbys? You have to order them from the Webby company. You get one free.

29:48Dina Doll:Nothing is free, right? I know.

29:50Popok:Nothing's free, not even the award you win. And then I'll put it here over on this little podium here. People will get to see it. That's one. Then, you know, this show sits, or the YouTube channel sits on this show. We've got a YouTube channel, 12 videos a day, over on called Legal AF YouTube. You may not have heard of it. Hopefully you have. Come over and help us pass the 1.2 million subscriber base. We're getting there. We're close. If you think you're subscribed, I don't think you are. I think you should go check. Because if everybody was subscribed, who told me they're subscribed, we'd have 3 million already.

30:27Popok:And if we just got 10 % of our viewership to subscribe, which is not a huge number, I'd even take 5%, we'd beat the Midas brothers. I'm not competitive. I'm just stating the obvious.

30:37Dina Doll:Sure you're not.

30:38Popok:But take a moment and hit the free, well, they're my partners over there too. They don't care.

30:43Dina Doll:I know.

30:43Popok:So hit the free subscribe button there as well. Then we've got Legal AF Substack. You'll see writings and reportings by Dina Dahl. I do a live report every day, including today, and a bunch of other content you can't find anywhere else. Legal AF Substack. So we've got two things going on there. And then we've got our sponsors that have been with us. Some of them have been with us from the very beginning, the last six years. Some of them are brand new, all curated and vetted by a combination of Jordy and me, the other hosts. So we're going to take a quick break, and then we're going to come back and finish the show.

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33:31Popok:But the only way to get 20 % off is to go to joindeliteme.com slash legal AF and then use code legal AF at checkout. That's joindeliteme.com slash legal AF, code legal AF. Welcome back to Legal AF. At the midweek, we got Dina Dahl sitting in for KFA and Michael Popok. So when things are going terribly, Dina, for a president, when every other day a new set of polling numbers come out, whether it's the guy on CNN that Donald Trump is having a bromance with, Harry Enten, Harry Enten is like, this is the most abysmal numbers in the history of the presidency. And then they stop Trump and Trump's like, I like that guy.

34:18Popok:I like that guy. You know, like, are you following the storyline here, Grandpa? So, you know, and then you got the silver bullet memo comes out. You got New York Times and Siena, Paul, Ipso, Paul. And they're competing to see who's going to report the lowest number for Donald Trump with the margin of error. He's in the 20s in favorability. And his takeaway from that is they love me. They can't get enough of me as the voters can't run further away from him. And if you plug all these numbers in, sorry, Karen, sorry, if you plug all these numbers in, Dina, thank you, then you come to the inexorable conclusion that he's going to lose the House and likely the Senate.

35:03Popok:I mean, you've got right direction, wrong direction approval numbers, which are horrendously low. You have the lowest consumer confidence index in history in 50 years. There's a lot of recessions that were in there and something called COVID. You've got that. You've got joblessness. No jobs being created by this economy. Hyperinflation already started. Double gas prices, which people hate for good reason because it ends up being a tax on everybody. Any tax refund you might have gotten has gone up in smoke at the gas pump. You plug all of that in, and it's a 40 to 50 seat advantage for the Democrats.

35:45Popok:I mean, there's polling out that shows that a random Democrat with no name, a no-name Democrat versus a no-name Republican in a congressional seat, the no-name Democrat wins by 11 points. We haven't even done platform. We haven't even done policies. We haven't even done the, do you want to have a beer with me test? It's just no name. And Trump knows it, which is why we're seeing, you know, you and I and others I've interviewed are starting everything now with this breathless. It's unprecedented. It is stunning. It's because he's running out of time. And he knows he's running out of time. I compared it on The Intersection last night to one of those game shows where they lock something.

36:27Popok:You win a chance in 20 minutes to grab whatever you can inside of a department store or a toy store or whatever it is, right? You get a shopping cart. Okay, he's going out of business. You know, he's trying to stuff as many dollars in his pocket and get as much benefit as possible before he's made completely powerless at the midterms. So all of this whistling past the graveyard, I think we're going to win. I just controlled the primaries. This guy lost because I said so. is all hyperbolic bullshit that's not going to help him in the electoral races. And then when he has a bad news cycle, which is like every third hour, he then pushes a button somewhere, you know, and Todd Blanche and his Department of Justice file or indict and do something else to steal the news story, which is why we waited until like the second half of the show instead of leading with Raul Castro of Cuba.

37:18Popok:like who gives a flying fuck about ryle ryle castro of cuba sorry my cuban american friends you know but i don't want to indict fidel castro any longer either so why don't you pick up the pieces from what got announced today and why you think it got announced today by a beleaguered

37:34Dina Doll:todd blair the indictment of castro basically that yes so the 94 year old and i think that is the That in itself is the detail of why this is a distraction. Reminds me a lot of how they they thought of celebrated about the killing of the Iranian leader, who was also probably going to pass away at any moment. But essentially, they indicted Raul Castro for a 1996. They took down a plane that had three American citizens in a green card holder. And we said that it was outside Cuban airspace. Cuba had always alleged that this was a terrorist group that they took out on the plane, but they have decided to indict him today.

38:21Dina Doll:Well, actually, it was just unsealed today. They indicted him back in April. He is not the current leader of Cuba, but he is the power still. He's seen as the power still behind the throne. Although, of course, here again, I'm going to say he's 94 years old. So his physical condition, we really have no idea. So it seems very much like a show. But Tablanca said this is not just some sort of show indictment. We basically plan on bringing him to justice. Does that mean they're going to go and capture him like Maduro and bring him here to the soil? you know who knows but at this point it sounds like we know that rubio and trump have been talking quite a bit about invading and taking over cuba there's that humanitarian crisis unfolding in cuba as a result of really us all the sanctions that we were having there to try to kind of force a regime change but i the for me the biggest takeaway here was this his age at this point, even if you were to prosecute a 94 year old man, I don't know how much power he really has at this point anymore.

39:33Yeah.

39:33Popok:Now let me give it from a Miami perspective.

39:36Dina Doll:Yes, please.

39:37Popok:All right. And so, and I've got former law partners that represented some of these people who were shot down in civil cases against the Cuban government. I don't have any insider knowledge, but I know those people. And I know what it means to the Cuban American population in the Cuban population in Miami. And think about where they chose to announce the indictment, Tina, in front of the Freedom Tower. Freedom Tower is not only the Ellis Island on Biscayne Boulevard in downtown Miami for the Cuban population, where they came through for immigration status, but it sits directly next to the 2.63 acre plot of land that Donald Trump has gotten donated by the state of Florida for his Trump Library Convention Center casino hotel thing, whatever that's supposed to be, a 50-tower monstrosity, where he stole$300 million from a local university because they gave him the property for free.

40:33Popok:There's a lawsuit about that that's pending down here in Miami related to the violation of the emoluments clause. So just out of, and if you take a wide enough lens with the indictment announcement, You can see the parking lot where he wants to build that. That's one. He's trying to curry favor and shore up his political support. This has nothing to do with 94-year-old Raul Castro. As you said earlier, it's always about Trump. Trump just watched Eileen Higgins, the mayor of Miami, Democrat, first Democrat in 30 years, first woman ever, and beat the MAGA pick by him, Trump, and Ron DeSantis by 14 points, okay, to win the mayoralty of the city of Miami.

41:23Popok:So just to be clear, there's a county that used to be called Dade County, now Miami-Dade County, and there's a county mayor. She's a Democrat. There is a city mayor who is now a Democrat, first time in 30 years, and first woman ever. And she won by a lot. She so crushingly crushed the guy, the MAGA guy she was running against, that he conceded within a second of the race people and said, what a great race. Anyway, so if he's got a hope to win and for MAGA to ever win again in Florida, they've got to secure that base in Miami. So this is a complete pandering to a Cuban-American, which is 70 % of Miami-Dade County, a Cuban-American population who cheered wildly, according to local reports, when the indictment was announced.

42:15Popok:because the symbolism of this 94-year-old, when Castro, his brother died, it was like a national holiday in Florida, in Miami. You know, I live within blocks of the Cuban exile community on Cayocho, which is kind of runs up against Coral Gables where I live. And so I get it. So if you think this was nothing more than we're having a slow news cycle and they've been getting pressure from Marco Rubio, used to be the senator down here, and others, I'm sure, including my former law partners, to bring Raul Castro before he dies to justice. Now, look, I'm not against octogenarians and septogenarians and nonogenarians being brought to justice, okay?

43:04Popok:I was very supportive of Elie Wassell and everybody who were Nazi hunters chasing after, including some that didn't, you know, that didn't get put on the stand until they were in their 90s and brought to justice. So it's not I don't want to say that justice has a time limit or a statute of limitations, but you also have to put this in the political context that you and I just did. And that's one thing I get to bring here of being a longtime resident in Miami and practicing law down here and being a part of this community is I see the political tambourine for what it is. And I think that's what we really just saw.

43:38Popok:To people who don't live down here, it's like, that's interesting. Roel Castro was just indicted. And I'm like, no, this is to shore up the votes. This is to get Spanish language radio, you know, a buzzing down, you know, and then it can, then it can roll into the midterm elections for the candidates. I'm sure every congressional candidate, uh, for, you know, Republican was at that press conference, you know, because that, you know, that they got to show their bona fides. Was Marco Rubio there? He had to have been, right?

44:09Dina Doll:I would think. I don't know.

44:10Popok:Yeah, I don't know what the reporting is. I think Marco is probably there because, you know, he's been trying to take over Cuba, his ancestral home, forever. And, you know, there's a big – let me just tell you that in the Cuban-American community down here, your bona fides are established depending upon when your family emigrated or were forced to leave the island. If your family was forced to leave because of Castro and the revolution, you have a certain higher status in this culture than if you came before. If you were part of the prior president and made a lot of money with the prior president and got out before, you're on a lower social rung than if you came out because you were forced out after.

44:56Popok:That still goes on down here from a political infrastructure that's controlled by the Cuban-American community. Mm hmm.

45:03Dina Doll:I mean, Trump is it's always a PR move, right? It's always a PR move. Who even knows if they're going to legally be able to actually physically bring him here? Yeah, no, that's a fascinating take there. And hopefully, you know, hopefully he doesn't get as many points as he's trying to get out of that PR move.

45:22Popok:Yeah, we'll see. I mean, that's what that's going to be. I want to see the polling on that. But he knows he's cratering in Miami for people in Idaho who are wondering, why are we indicting Raul Castro at this late date and bringing him to justice? It has as much to do about bringing somebody to justice for a horrendous act of shooting a plane out of a sky and killing people as it does for the political side byproduct of shoring up failing numbers in Miami. And of course, we sit at that politics and law intersection. So we wanted to bring it to you there. You want to talk about Judge Bates and the and the Public Presidential Records Act and what's happened there?

46:02Popok:Can you frame that issue? Yes.

46:03Dina Doll:Well, I think that Trump is taking a cue knowing that Nixon should have destroyed those tapes way back when, because as we know, the tapes are what brought back, brought down Richard Nixon. By the way, Trump's approval ratings is about where Richard Nixon was when he was forced to resign. That's how bad those poll numbers are. Well, rather than just, you know, take his files and have the FBI come after him again, Trump has decided to have the DOJ say, well, presidential records should just not be a thing anymore. And that's because as president, he has this absolute power over the executive branch, that he cannot be told by Congress to preserve the records.

46:47Dina Doll:That's what the DOJ said to the court. They're trying to basically make it so Trump could either destroy them or just put them in his briefcase and take them this time wherever he wants. The judge base issued a preliminary injunction saying, no, you have to preserve all of the records. You know, this litigation is still going to be moving forward, but right now they have to follow the Presidential Records Act. And it is also, I thought, indicative of the time that this preliminary injunction also said that the presidential and vice presidential team within the White House cannot use Signal, Chat or WhatsApp for their official communications.

47:34Dina Doll:because as we know, you know, Hegseth has infamously used it. And this is one way that executive branch can just do a runaround around the Presidential Records Act is use an app that auto deletes. So the preliminary injunction also making it clear there that they're not supposed to be doing that. But, you know, it's the office of the president is this is a public. You are a public servant. That job, the powers is being loaned. to you by the American people. Unfortunately, too many people gave that power to Trump to be low. But it is stunning to me. You know, the No Kings rallies, some people said they thought maybe the No Kings was too cutesy of a term or something like that.

48:19Dina Doll:But Trump, in so many ways, just really does want to be a monarch between the putting his face on the passport. I don't know if anybody hasn't renewed their passport yet. Go do it quickly because his face is going to be on it. You're going to be stuck with his face on the passport to him signing the hundred dollar bills along with the Treasury secretary to him not wanting any record of his communications. He wants to change the office of the president. And unfortunately, the Supreme Court has given into him so many times how much they're willing to. I mean, this is what we talk about on our Supreme Court unprecedented show all the time.

48:56Dina Doll:They push back when it came to the Federal Reserve and the tariffs because, of course, it's money. And they care about the money. And they don't push back when it comes to labor rights and the board governing the labor rights. But this is the tension that exists. And really, it's not just Trump. It is Project 2025. It is the Republicans. It is that movement that wants to make the president all powerful in this co-equal branch of government. So for today, Judge Bates, at least issuing this preliminary injunction, saying, I don't care what you say, Department of Justice, your interpretation of the Presidential Records Act, you have to follow it while this litigation proceeds.

49:42Popok:Absolutely. And probably beyond, probably beyond the litigation. So stop burning everything and stop shoving it down the toilet and eating it and whatever else they were doing during the first Trump administration. It's the people's papers. It'll always be the people's papers. And no, it's not. I don't think it's going to be found to be a violation of the separation of powers that Congress has created the National Archives and required that the National Records Act and the National Archives and required that the presidential papers end up there. All they're doing is directing where the repository is and that the documents end up there.

50:20Popok:And I think ultimately even the Supreme Court is going to find that that is not a violation of the separation of powers and all of that. When we come back, we're going to talk about the ballroom and other things related to it, how it may tie back to other things that are important to Donald Trump. But I think it's a big blow to the ballroom. a couple of developments in the ballroom that we should talk about. And, but first we're going to take our last break. We've got the legal AF podcast on Wednesday nights, on Saturday nights, and now on Mondays at 5 PM with Dina doll and Lisa graves. Can't, we could not have put the crown jewel of our podcast in better hands to carry forward with a third night than Dina and Lisa.

51:06Popok:So please you're doing it. We're on our third or fourth show. We'll be doing one on Memorial Day, and everybody should check it out. That's one of the new programming feeds that we have on the Legal AF YouTube channel, so you're going to want to check that out. Speaking of the Legal AF YouTube channel, we could use your help to continue to grow our subscriber base. That's all. People are like, what keeps Legal AF and Midas on the air? It's this. It's the subscriber base. You know, the bigger we are from a real audience, we're not looking for trolls. We're looking for real audience members that are the vibrant contributors to our community.

51:44Popok:I'll just give you the math here. That gives us the street cred, things like the Webby Awards, the views, the comments, the thumbs up, the likes, the reviews. That gives us the street cred to continue to grow, to bring on newsmakers, to get the lawyers and the plaintiffs and the senators and the governors and the newsmakers and the constitutional scholars and all to say, oh, yeah, I want to do Legal AF. Absolutely. And so we have a YouTube channel that helps support that as well. But we need you to do your part. Free subscribe. Then hit the button. For instance, I'm going to have the Brendan Ballew for the Public Integrity Project, who's the lawyers for the first filed case against the slush fund, joining me tomorrow.

52:31Popok:Governorship Bureau, fresh off his unopposed Democratic primary win in Pennsylvania. We need him to win Pennsylvania and then maybe consider other things in 2028. I don't know. Maybe I'll break some news tomorrow. He's coming on to be interviewed with me. And again, the bigger we get as we're building this channel and this network with our bare hands, brick by brick, then the more variety of content that we can provide. So that's where you could do your part. Substack needs a little love too. You can blow it a kiss. Legal AF Substack, become a member, a paid member. I do a live report every day, which I think people enjoy.

53:11Popok:Get over a thousand people to join me there and they can talk back to me and I talk back to them throughout the show. And then content like Dina Tal and me, we do essays all day long and analysis. I post all of the filings, orders, briefs, motions that I use during the day for my hot takes, my videos all end up under filings AF. So I wanna show people, I wanna do a little demonstrative. This is just today. This is, my printer hates me. This is, and I have to print this stuff. Sorry, folks, I'm at that age. this is orders and briefs and settlement agreements and transcripts and all sorts of things that from there, from this comes the videos and the prep and all of that.

53:56Popok:So just so you know what we're doing there. And then we've got our sponsors. Dina, we got some of our pro-democracy sponsors. They don't gag us. They know what we're saying. They're supporters of the First Amendment and independent journalism. And we'll take a break for them now. If a genie gave me wishes, I would use at least one of them to wish for my cat Chanel to live forever. But since genies don't exist, as far as I know, I feed my cat Smalls. Smalls is fresh, human-grade cat food that does so much more than just feed your cat. It helps them live a full, healthy life. Most cat food out there is made with meat byproducts, cheap fillers, and artificial ingredients.

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56:39Popok:And right now, IQ Bar is offering our special podcast listeners 20 % off all IQ Bar products, including the Ultimate Sampler Pack, plus free shipping. To get your 20 % off, text LEGALAF to 64000. Text LEGALAF to 64000. That's LEGALAF to 64000. Message and data rates may apply. See terms for details. else we are back and thank you to our pro-democracy sponsors dina doll michael popock lightning round no i'm kidding do rorschach test i'll say something you tell me the first thing that pops into your mind back in law school first thing that pops into your mind ballroom uh all right so ballroom you know trump says why is everybody upset it's free it's not free it's no it's no more free than the$400 million, you know, not Kuwait, Qatar, Boeing jet that is being converted for billions of taxpayer dollars into Air Force One.

57:42Popok:If he lives to get on that plane, I mean that chronologically, I'll be shocked if that thing is ready in time. But, you know, but the retrofitting and then he's going to apparently take the taxpayer your dollars, like a paper airplane, and fly away and stick it in the Miami Convention Center hotel and casino library thing that he's building on public dollars, public land. So he got that. And the same guy that said that's free told everybody when he knocked over the East Wing in the middle of the night without a permit that the ballroom's free. Why is everybody complaining. I got 400 million people,$400 million, because apparently it's 1.4 billion, and you seem to be 1 billion short.

58:30So there was a bill that the House originated.

58:34Popok:I think they feel sorry about that now, in which they said, oh, and then they had the Secret Service guy, Dina, run around and start lobbying Republicans for votes. Well, 220 million of it is to harden the ballroom. Oh, the ballroom's not hardened? I thought the ballroom was supposed to collapse on top of the bunker, and that was part of the security system. Now it needs to be hardened. So hardening. And then there's other threats. Well, you didn't think about those threats before. Maybe because this whole thing got planned on the back of a napkin in the middle of the night. That's why they're doing that now.

59:10Popok:Oh, there's also a Secret Service training. Yeah, that's a good idea. You probably want to get Secret Service training. So here's the bill, America, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer. A billion dollars. What happened to that?

59:22Dina Doll:Well, it didn't work out. The Senate parliamentarian first said, you know, because of course the GOP just wants to try to add it to the reconciliation bill. So they didn't actually have to have a vote on the record. And the Senate parliamentarian said they couldn't. And now it looks like the GOP is kind of dropping it because it is like a hot potato. It's really unpopular. They've already extremely unpopular going into the midterms. The last thing they want is to put their name on a vote for this ballroom. Ballroom slash bunker, as we know, that's the other thing too. They're not really clear about what is this money actually going to the existing bunker that is under there?

1:00:01Dina Doll:How much of it is that? How much of it is the ballroom? I just think that it's like a perfect metaphor, the fact that Trump knocked it down before having a plan. It is very easy to destroy something. Anybody can do it with a bulldozer, right? Anybody can fire somebody. Like the promise that Doge had about firing all of those air traffic controllers, hundreds of air traffic controllers, because there was supposed to be a modernization of them, the control centers. And so we didn't need as many employees. And so they just fired the people. I'm not hearing anything about some great new technology that's streamlining it.

1:00:38Dina Doll:In fact, we're hearing the opposite, it, right? All these planes with near misses. You know, it's easy to destroy something. It's very hard to build it. But Trump, I think he knocked it down like a day or two after one of the No Kings rallies. He was upset how unpopular he was. He took it out on the American people. He knocked down a historic part of the White House that does not belong to him. And now he can't find funding from it, even with his weakling GOP colleagues, because he keeps lying about how much it is. He keeps lying about why he needs it. He keeps, you know, lying about who's going to pay for it.

1:01:14Dina Doll:You know, they try even with this, you know, assassination attempt where so many people don't even know if it's real or not, you know, that they try to use for this ballroom. The fact is, is Trump uses Mar-a-Lago ballroom all the time. It is a private ballroom. He doesn't need a billion dollar ballroom in order to be safe. The White House is extremely safe as it is. The East Wing, including the East Wing that he had knocked down, was extremely safe. So yeah, for now, at least this is a DOA, as you would say. He cannot get the funding for this very unpopular ballroom due in part, really, to him.

1:01:55Dina Doll:Him and his lies have made this so politically impossible for the GOP to back, at least for now. If they manage to pull out the midterms, I'm sure they will resurrect it, but they know that they will probably be voted. This would be just another thing that the Democrats would campaign on.

1:02:17Popok:Well, like you said, you're right about that. Look at Iran. As I said, they can train a whole room of chimpanzees to push a button to bomb and do 50 ,000 bombing sorties. But what was the plan for the 90 million people? What was the plan for the regime change? What was the plan to secure the uranium stockpile? What was the plan? There was none. Apparently the plan is every 45 minutes announced that they're either bombing or not bombing, that they're going to bomb. This is the calm before the storm, the storm before the calm, the calm of the storm before the storm of the calm. And if one more, if this is like the parent that doesn't get, you know, The child tunes out because one more time you come home late.

1:03:02Popok:I'm going to take away. I'm running out of things to take away. Nobody believes him. He has a special talent, Donald Trump. Every world leader that tussles with him, they come out stronger than they were before. Right? At home and globally. And Donald Trump comes home shrunken and weak and tail between his legs. Example, Putin coming out of Alaska and the Ukraine war. or Xi, China, or Iran's regime, the Revolutionary Guard. Okay? They're all sitting pretty. I mean, yeah, there's some. And what is, just to touch on Iran for a minute, and what's Donald Trump going to end up doing to declare victory?

1:03:43Popok:He's going to end up entering into a treaty that looks exactly like Barack Obama's treaty about the nuclear stockpile, you know, almost exactly the one that Trump shit all over, with one difference. We're now going to be on the hook for the billions of dollars of reparations to help Iran rebuild its Navy and its electrical grid and all the other things and its oil infrastructure and all the other things that we bombed. So we have to pay because big, big, big baby president wanted to be a wartime president to try to shore up his failing domestic numbers and domestic policy. I know. I'll start a war.

1:04:26Popok:and you know without as you said without any planning whatsoever you know and we're lucky we really i mean this without too much tongue in cheek we're lucky that he didn't knock over the entire white house because other the same his same approach the white house is the white house is insecure it's shabby it's insecure i'm not comfortable there i live there now knock it all down, put a trailer outside. We're putting up a 30-story building, ladies and gentlemen. And you can't do a thing about it. Just because it was the East Wing, which they still in filings act like is still there. The refurbishment of the East Wing.

1:05:09Popok:You can't demolish the East Wing and say you're refurbishing it at the same time. If you hired a contractor to refurbish your house and you went out for lunch and the whole thing was torn down, you'd be understandably upset because that wasn't the refurbishment that you want. He could have torn down the whole White House. You know, we're lucky that he didn't. And you're right when he gets petulant, like, oh, people don't like me. What can I do now? Bulldozer. He did the same thing at the Kennedy Center, you know, changed the name, slapped his name over John F. Kennedy's, which was in the moment, you know, in the year after his assassination with a country literally mourning.

1:05:54Popok:They built the Kennedy Center and put his name on it in Testament to John F. Kennedy. And then he just typed his name on top of it. And then when nobody showed up and all of the ballet troops and opera and Broadway and stars and singers and this and that canceled, canceled, canceled, canceled. And it was going to be like Lee Greenwood every night. I don't know what this is supposed to be. I don't know. Like Lee and MMA. fighting, you know, Dana White production. He said, I got an idea. I'm going to tear down the Kennedy Center. Right. He's like tearing down the Kennedy Center because it leaks.

1:06:33Dina Doll:I know his obsession with he wants that he wants the respect of Kennedy, but he's trying to bully his way and buy it instead of earn it. And then he's obsessed with Obama. He could not handle that deal in Iran. And like you said, we're going to be worse off, but probably end up with a similar deal. And same with the healthcare credits. I mean, they, it's stunning to me, speaking about stunning, okay, that's going to be my word of the day here. The fact that the Republicans are not even talking anymore about a replacement for all those healthcare credits under Obamacare that they allowed expire on January 1st.

1:07:14Dina Doll:I mean, they don't even talk about putting in a proposal. So many Americans had their premiums skyrocket only because Trump hated the fact that the Obamacare was so incredibly popular. If you notice, they started calling it the Affordable Care Act because they didn't even want to give Obama the credit anymore to include his name. In the beginning, they called it Obamacare because they thought it was a dig. But now that it's so popular, they're starting to call it the Affordable Care Act. So I'm going to keep calling it Obamacare. But they just let that expire. So many people are without health care.

1:07:48Dina Doll:They're going to get diagnosed with cancer. They're going to have heart attacks. And they're going to have no health insurance. And that also needs to get drummed in here as we're leading up to the midterms. Because it's another example of it's very easy to let something that took so long to negotiate and put into law expire. Anybody can let something expire. But they have zero discussion. It seems to be they have moved on completely from the fact that they increased health care premiums by thousands of thousands of dollars across the country because they cannot build anything. They can only break it.

1:08:29Popok:yeah i mean this is i like that uh the this is a uh an administration that is um in a race to the bottom at every level is trying i guess to prove to the american people the the age-old question how low can you go we're watching the department of justice and todd blanch how low can you go we're watching failing polling numbers for donald trump how low can you go i mean we're not talking about an administration that's on the ass end, that is getting its footing, that is, you know, had a rough patch in the very beginning, but is now making a vital connection with the American people. Nobody believes that.

1:09:14Popok:Quite the opposite, right?

1:09:16Dina Doll:Did you see Jeff Bezos just gave an interview? He gave an interview to see that. Oh, he says he's better. He said he was more mature this term.

1:09:25Popok:Well, he was a two-year-old in the first administration, and now he's two and a half. But yeah, I mean, but Bezos.

1:09:32Dina Doll:He's so much more dangerous this time around.

1:09:33Popok:Bezos is a butt licker from, sorry, boot licker. Did I say butt? Boot or butt? Boot butt licker from way back. You know, he's the one that gave Melania Trump$40 million for a documentary, has billions of of Amazon computing contracts with the government. Went, you know, I don't know if he went. Did he go to China? Wasn't he there? Wasn't he one of the dozen? Yeah, right? And he invites all the Trumpers to his wedding, to what's her name? He is so far up Donald Trump's backside, right? Yeah. Right? So Bezos should just, there should be a warning label when people like this get, And I am not an independent thought or commentary.

1:10:19Popok:I am so conflicted with my business interests. This would go too long on the lower third. But I am so conflicted in my business interests that you cannot trust a word that I say. And you know what? Where did you see that? Where was that interview? It was on C-SPAN. Right. And God damn it, C-SPAN. No, CNBC. And CNBC, according to our producer, had a C in it.

1:10:42Dina Doll:Okay. There's nothing with a C.

1:10:44Popok:There's nothing with a C. cnbc of course doesn't do their job as journalists they should have said well but let's be frank here yeah you you do have a little bit of a conflict do you not because you're in basically in business with donald trump and his entire family and you were just on the plane to china and now suddenly you're declaring that he is a competent administrator how do you think the american people should view what lens through which should they view your comments but nobody has the balls to say that that's why people come on midas touch and on legal af because this is our new bumper sticker.

1:11:15Popok:We have the balls to say it.

1:11:17Dina Doll:Yeah, absolutely.

1:11:19Popok:Sorry, Dina. Did I make you blush? No. Okay. I didn't mean to.

1:11:23Dina Doll:I'm not, I'm not, you know.

1:11:25Popok:I've seen you swear like a sailor.

1:11:27Dina Doll:Have you?

1:11:28Popok:No.

1:11:30Dina Doll:Yeah. I don't swear, but I'm not exactly going to be, I don't care if you do.

1:11:37Popok:You're not a, you're not a hothouse flower either.

1:11:40Dina Doll:Exactly.

1:11:41Popok:I've been around the block. I've been a top lawyer for too long for that. But thanks for being here. Thanks for stepping in for KFA. So many different ways to support our show. You already know. You know the check. People in our audience can do the checklist for me, right? Put it in comments. One, subscribe to Legal AF YouTube channel. Two, while you're there, do Midas Touchdown. Two, go over to Legal AF Substack. Become a member or even a paid member. That's two. Three, support our sponsors. That's really important, right? And then help the show because that gives us the street cred that we need.

1:12:16Popok:Continue to put five-star reviews over on the audio podcast platforms, comments, views, bring people to the next episode. That all helps as we continue to grow our pro-democracy brand for you. And I really appreciate it. Dina always a pleasure you're going to be on with me for Unprecedented which is our Supreme Court show we might have who knows on Friday we might have some new unprecedented Supreme Court droppings that you and I can unpack and then you're going to be on Memorial Day Monday at 5pm Eastern Time with Dina Dahl oh look at this look at the graphic Monday Night Live Legal AF with Lisa Graves and Dina Dahl how are you that looks fantastic and you'll be doing that we'd like everybody to join that get in on the ground floor.

1:13:01Popok:Yes. Six years in the making, but the first new episode, first new chapter night of Legal AF has now been launched and get in on the ground floor while you can. So thanks for everybody being here. Love the energy that we had tonight and shout out to the Midas Mighty and the Legal AFers.